BILLERICA -- Pete Sheppard, one of the many colorful personalities to pass through the doors at Boston sports radio station WEEI, knows all too well the turbulent the nature of his business.

The emotional highs are Mt. Everest-worthy, the lows comparable to that of the ocean floor. Sheppard, who moved with his wife, Elaine, to Billerica two years ago, has experienced it all.

Yet spend an hour talking to the man known to his loyal listeners as Pete the Meat and you'll meet someone who has zero professional regrets. How a Rhode Island kid with no connections in the ultra-competitive Boston sports radio scene made it to the top, fell to the bottom, and is now making a comeback, is the stuff of great drama.

Before landing a gig with sports-talk juggernaut WEEI, Billerica resident Pete Sheppard spent stints at more than a dozen small Massachusetts and Rhode Island stations, including WFGL in Fitchburg, above, where he worked in 1991 with Tracy Caruso, who is now a co-host for WZID's "New Hampshire in the Morning" drive-time show broadcast in Manchester. Courtesy Pete Sheppard

The only sure thing in Sheppard's life is that he'll never stay quiet for long.

Q: Let's start at the beginning. Why radio?

A: I love it, and this is how crazy I was when I was a kid -- I set up my bedroom as a studio to do Bruins games. It was 1982 and I was Fred Cusick. No computers or stat sheets then. I did play-by-play into a recorder. Had another recorder that would play background noise of fans cheering. I got that sound by taping the crowd noise of Lorenzo Charles' game-winning shot (1983 NCAA Basketball Championship Game) and looping it together for a half hour.

Q: It took a while but eventually someone decided to pay you money to be on the radio. What was your first gig?

A: In 1987, I moved to Waltham to study at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting.

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Back then, you had to audition just to get in. Four days after I was done, I got a full-time job at WKFD in Wickford, R.I. I was making $3.50 an hour. It was a 250-watt radio station, but at night it was 150 watts -- that's like the equivalent of a string and two Styrofoam cups.

Q: What was your strangest assignment?

A: It's 1989 and now I'm at a bigger station -- WKRI in West Warwick. I started doing more sports, and that was the year Nickelodeon decided to televise the 14- to 15-year-old Babe Ruth World Series at Cranston Stadium. Me and my mentor at the time, John Parente, did play-by-play and color and a pregame show. But someone accidentally deleted the pregame show. So we taped it postgame. Weird. I don't think Nickelodeon does that anymore.

Q: You also did radio work in Fitchburg, right?

A: That was when I got my first great interview. It's around 1990 and I'm with WFGL. Buzz Bissinger had just written Friday Night Lights, looking at big-time high-school football in small-town Texas. This was right after Brockton was number one in high-school football and lost to Leominster. I remember some Brockton kids wound up killing themselves over it. Buzz knew all about it, the rivalry but also the devastation.

Q: When did you start covering the Red Sox?

A: I'm still in Fitchburg (at the time), right down the street at WEIM. They had me cover a few games. My first memory is asking (former Sox slugger) Jack Clark if he thought his standing too far away from the plate was responsible for striking out seven times in a row. He teed off on me. Every swear in the book. Later (Boston Globe columnist) Bob Ryan put his arm around me and told me not to worry about it, Clark's an (expletive).

Q: How did you get your break?

A: In 1995, I remember just getting in my car with some tapes and my résumé and driving to Boston. That's where I needed to be, and I knew I could do it. Not many people know this, but WEEI seldom produces their own sports-flash updates. Metro Networks handles it. Their offices were at Channel 7 (WHDH) so I went there. Would you believe that was the same day WEEI blew up as a sports radio station? I got hired on the spot to do the flash.

Q: Then came The Big Show, Glenn Ordway's evening drive-time radio show. What happened when you were promoted to do the sports flash for that show?

A: There was a Monday in 1999 where the fire alarm was pulled at Foxboro Stadium. Glenn couldn't do his show with (then-Patriots quarterback) Drew Bledsoe. My producer at Metro says, "Pete, you gotta stay on the air." I'm doing the show from my cubicle with (co-sports-flash voice) John Wallach. Then Glenn comes on and we stay on for another half hour. Wallach and I got a huge response from listeners. Afterward I get a call from WEEI. They want us to do our own weekend show. I remember pulling over my car and starting to cry.

Q: What was your proudest accomplishment at WEEI?

A: I remember working on 9-11. Glenn was never more of a pro than on that day. We didn't go back to sports talk for a week. Instead, we talked about what our listeners wanted to talk about -- the attacks. We brought in experts. We went in an entirely different direction than I was used to. But Glenn gave me some great advice those days, I remember him telling me, "You never go to a party and insist on playing your own CD collection." He's talking about what the listeners want.

Q: Life for you at WEEI abruptly ended a few years ago. What happened?

A: It was 2010, the night of the special Senate election. Management called me in, and I knew something was about to happen. It wasn't about my work, it was about cutbacks. The same reason they just let Glenn go. It's all about the money.

Q: But you're back, albeit in a smaller role. What was it like coming back, and what has been your greatest accomplishment since then?

A: I remember the day. March 7, 2012, I get the call. I've been filling in since then, and the irony is that Glenn doesn't have a job at the station but I do. We're still very close, and I never forgot his advice. My greatest accomplishment was also my worst day. I was assigned the Sunday morning after the Newtown school shootings. I was upset. I couldn't sleep. I had to do Patriots football, but I thought to myself, who cares? I sent out a Twitter message asking listeners for help. We spent the next three hours on the air, comforting each other, and the lines were jam-packed. That was a phenomenal show.

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